Bare by stella luna sky.pdf

Bare by stella luna sky

http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1957235/stella_luna_sky

Chapter: 1

Musings of the Insecure

I am not beautiful, she wrote. Her script was a mixture of cursive and print, the lovely

handwriting already a contradiction of her words . I am my mother's keeper, my daddy's

little girl, and I thank them for my name, but I do not live up to it.

The notebook slammed shut suddenly, because she felt eyes where they didn't belong,

ghosting her words with each loop and scratch.

"There is Camus in your back pocket, and a Biology textbook on your desk," she hissed

at the boy next to her. "Surely, they are more interesting than the musings of an insecure

girl."

"Sorry," he whispered back, and she could almost feel the heat of his shame in being

caught.

She was flustered too; she hated confrontation, and she had spit fire at someone she

hadn't spoken to in months. All he had done for the past six weeks was ignore her, shoot

various looks of loathing and smoke in her direction, and then retreat back into his own

space – in the lunchroom, across the parking lot, in Biology. She could feel herself

shaking, so she raised her hand and asked for a bathroom pass.

Once she was there, she splashed water on her face, catching the reflection she had

proclaimed minutes earlier as not beautiful. She was all dark browns, eyes and hair and

eyebrows and tiny freckles on her neck, against skin the shade of an elephant's tusk. The

heat of her hometown, Phoenix, had done nothing to put peaches underneath her skin; if

anything, it made her more white, the antithesis sunburn.

She had no makeup on her skin for the water to mess up, so she scrubbed her face with a

rough brown paper towel, the only hue on her face a bright red dash across her cheeks

and forehead. She was flustered, and this made her color, two rose petals pushing against

her sinuses and through her cheekbones. She was almost pretty then, she thought, but still

not beautiful, still not Bella.

But she was a Bella, a non-beautiful Bella, and that almost made her happy – she was a

walking contradiction, and maybe someone, somewhere, would find that interesting.

When she made her way back to the Biology classroom, smelling of old crinkled brown

paper and perfumed sweat, she slid back into her seat.

"Are you all right?" asked the voice next to her ear, his breath all boy and marijuana and

the apple she had watched him eat for lunch.

"I'm sorry I lost my temper," she said quietly, though she wasn't sorry.

"I'm sorry I read your insecure musings," he said, sounding like a smile, but she didn't

look up at him.

"You are not," she accused, folding her arms over her chest and resting them against the

cool black top of the desk.

"You aren't, either," he replied, and she grinned despite her tension.

"We can't be friends," she told him, reminding him of his words from weeks ago, when

he had snarled at her for thanking him for saving her life from harsh metal and slick

asphalt.

He opened his mouth to speak, closed it, licked his lips, and then settled on a wry smile.

"I'm tired of trying to stay away from you, Bella."

Bella looked at the boy, who was beautiful with only one glance and devastating with a

lingering stare. His unlined face told of youth, but his eyes – with the antifreeze color and

the gold ring around the black pupil, reminding her of a sunflower – told her of hidden

wisdom, of secrets she would never learn.

"I'm not chasing you, Edward," she whispered.

He laughed, a clear noise, and it made Mr. Banner look up sharply.

"You couldn't catch me, Bella."

Mr. Banner was about to respond, but the bell tolled. Edward stood slowly, and she

watched the lines of his strange copper-color hair, the hue of shiny new pennies straight

from the bank. Even in fluorescent lighting, he was unattainable.

"Have a nice weekend, Bella."

Bella nodded at her desk, collecting her books and shoving them into her blue backpack.

She felt him go by her, the heat from his body keeping her breath held in her lungs. Then

he was gone, and she relaxed and picked up her Moleskine.

She didn't open her notebook again until late that night, ready to pour out the strange day

in ink. She was full; Charlie had brought home some good steaks from the local butcher,

and it was dry enough to grill, so he manned the outdoors while she made a salad and a

pasta side. Now it was rainy, the good kind of rainy, where it made sleep comfortable and

quick, and she was almost ready to succumb.

When she flipped it open to the page she had left off on, a very different script met her

eyes. Under her rant of beauty lacking, were three words in a neat, elegant print:

You are beautiful.

And, just for a moment, she believed it.

Chapter: 2

They're Not Listening Anyway

Seven weeks earlier

Bella Swan's name was not a lost irony on her. The first book her mother bought her was

The Ugly Duckling, and it was still in her possession, a dusty old thing; she traced the

gold lettering as she placed it on her bookshelf in her new bedroom.

Well, her new-old bedroom. The bedroom of her youth was now the bedroom of her

upper adolescence, being seventeen-almost-eighteen, thank you very much. She picked

up a few more paperbacks, girly stories by Sarah Dessen and mysteries by Ian Fleming

and classics by Dickens and Austen. Her iPod brought her the sounds of Charlotte

Church – she was a strange girl, she knew she was.

Satisfied, she turned to her bed, the purple down comforter Charlie, her father, had

shoved in her direction earlier that evening waiting to be put in place. She almost got to it

before the tears came, but she couldn't help it, opera always made her feel melancholy,

and she missed her mother, and wanted her cactus plant that she wasn't allowed to take on

the plane.

Sniffling pathetically, she chided herself. She needed fresh air, and Forks, Washington

had plenty of it. She padded downstairs in her long, comfy tie-dyed socks (a survivor of

the seventies, straight from her mother's hippie days) and was almost to the porch door

when she saw Charlie standing in the middle of the kitchen, looking uncomfortable.

"Dad?" she questioned, wondering why he was staring at a jar of Alfredo, a box of penne

noodles, and raw chicken breast like it was about to implode.

"Bella!" he said, startled. She must have really spooked him, or embarrassed him,

because even a small town cop wouldn't start so easily. "Uh, hi honey. Hungry?"

No, she thought. "Sure," she said. "What's for dinner?"

He shuffled uncomfortably, and suddenly, Bella understood. Charlie was used to fending

for himself – she shuddered to think how many pizzas he had eaten – and was trying to

make her a homecoming meal. Feeling a wave of affection, she smiled.

"How does some chicken Alfredo sound?" she asked him. "I was just about to run out for

some fresh air, but I'll come back in and cook in a second..." She put her hand to the knob

just as she heard a honk outside.

Charlie grinned at her under his mustache. "Dinner sounds great, Bella. Let's go outside.

There's a little surprise waiting for you out there."

Smiling curiously at her handsome father, she opened the door and stood out on the

porch, squinting into the twilight and light drizzle.

"Hello there!" a gruff voice called, intertwined with a light accent, all ancient forest and

oak.

Bella smiled shyly in response and looked over her shoulder at her dad. "Who's that?"

"Billy Black!" Charlie called, both an answer and a greeting. "If you were any slower,

you'd be moving backwards, old man."

"Don't patronize me, Chief. I wouldn't want to have to embarrass you in front of your

beautiful daughter, here."

Bella flushed; she hated when her parents' friends, or any adult, called her beautiful. It

was a more of a compliment to her parents than to her, and it felt fake and forced, kind of

like when she was sick and her mother smoothed her hair back and told her she looked

fine, just fine.

She was not beautiful, and she was not fine. But that was her own secret.

"It's good to see you again, sir," Bella said, as Billy came closer to her, rolling in a

wheelchair she didn't remember.

"It must not be, if I look old enough for a sir ," Billy grimaced playfully. "Jake, don't be a

stranger. Come say hi to Bella."

A boy with dark skin and glossy hair moved forward, tripping over his feet. She couldn't

make him out until he fell into the line of yellow porch light.

"Oh!" she said, recognizing the boy who used to throw mud at her down by the river as

they waited for their fathers to fish out dinner. "Jacob!" She sprinted down the porch

steps and was hugging him before she could think of what she was doing.

He stiffened in surprise, then laughed, a beautiful sound, like bells in a cathedral. "Hi,

Bella. It's good to see you again."

She drew back, laughing at her enthusiasm. "Sorry, it's just... I forgot I had a friend here.

It's nice. Are you going to Forks High, too?"

He shook his head. "No, I go to school on the Reservation."

Bella bit her lip. "Damn."

Jacob brightened at her curse word, like he had just found a new partner in crime. "But

you will be riding to school in style." He patted the rusty truck next to him, something

she had ignored until now.

"What? Dad?" She turned around to see her father stick a check into Billy's hand. "It's

mine, really?"

Charlie smiled. "Uh huh."

She gave Jacob another hug, which made the adults laugh this time, too.

XxXxX

Bella had been more excited about having a vehicle of her very own than the actual

1950's piece of armor her father had bought her. But when she climbed in the next

morning, her stomach shredded into anxious little pieces, she found she loved it. The

radio worked, though she could only pick up a country and a gospel station, and the

heater was lovely against her chilled, wet skin. She drove to school with a small smile on

her face, trying not to think of the loud noise the engine was making. She hated drawing

attention to herself.

That, of course, was always what happened. When she parked that morning, surrounded

by her classmates, the truck backfired like a 12-gauge in an abandoned field.

She got out, ignoring the stares. She threw her backpack around her shoulder and ducked

her head. She heard trilling laughter and looked up as a girl with a shock of dark hair,

twisted and held with clips in the shape of British flags, smiled kindly at her. She was

standing next to a tall boy with amber hair, wearing linen pants and flip flops – flip-flops,

in this weather!

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